Tokyo, Feb 16: After expressing serious reservations on market access in agriculture, India today strongly advocated greater market access to goods and services in the non-agricultural sector from the developing countries for a larger share of the world trade to facilitate its structured growth. Modalities for negotiations on market access in non-agricultural products must take into account the need of the developing countries for a flexible use of tariff protection to assist their economic development as had been clearly spelt out in the Doha Declaration, he said. New Delhi lamented that many countries have not taken into account the principle of less-than-full reciprocity in tariff reduction commitments.
Jaitley suggested that it would be better to use a simple reduction technique from bound tariff in a phased manner, which could take care of the concerns of developing countries in terms of their revenue considerations and the requirements of their sensitive employment generating sectors.
"For India, which has diverse industrial base covering many products and different levels of technology, the development aspect in working out the modalities for non-agricultural products market access would be vital," he said. Bureau Report